For your poetry analysis essay, which you
will compose in class, you need to compile all of your prewriting work and
textual annotations, using all of this material as a reference point for your composition.You should build beforehand a strong,
argumentative thesis as well as key points of support, using lines and images
from the selected poem as your guideposts.Save time in class for proofreading and content editing: you may use
during this timed session a thesaurus, dictionary, laptop, and other reference
materials.Your essay should run three
to five hand-written pages, use double spacing, include a heading, title, and
appropriate in-text and end citations for all quotes.

Key points to remember when
composing a thesis statement

·Start with open-ended
questions about the text, and don’t pose questions you can close with a
fact.Make your thesis argumentative.
And, by all means, do not write on what is most obvious about images or literal
events.Example of a poor thesis:William Carlos Williams explores Brueghel’s
pictorial of a rustic dance in the poem “The Dance.”(No duh!)

·Center your thesis statement(s) on theme, metaphor, voice of the
speaker (tone and mood), conceit, simile, imagery, or structure.Choose any one of or a combination of these
elements, noting specifically how the poet constructs or deconstructs them.You
may also link intertextual ideas and images, connecting multiple texts through
similarities in theme, voice, structure, etc.

·Choose themes that are not too obvious or too broad.Bad examples: power, subjugation, the eroticism of Empire, resistance, etc.Alone, these issues are too massive: strive
for a more structured, developed focus.(See, for example, the Heaney-based thesis statements on the next
page).

While a few
scenes in Demme’s adaptation exaggerate the novel’s supernatural element, the
film remains overall faithful to Morrison’s muted evocation of necromancy.

Kafka’s use of
changing perspectives in the story disrupts the reader’s expectation of a
reliable narrative “truth.”

Evoking a
ravished landscape and population, “Act of Union”
captures the sexual trauma of Irish subjugation and the long, bloody fight for
self-rule.

The two
sonnets that comprise “Act of Union” contain symbols and images, which, apropos
to the poem’s title and erotic conceit, reveal a fluid and recursive struggle
for power between the conquering British and the defiant Irish.

Example of a Not So Good
Thesis…(and why it does not work)

Sharon Olds’ “Saturn”
deals with a parent’s alcoholism and evil.

Whereas the first three statements promise a
rich and highly focused examination of text, this thesis about “Saturn” is
ultimately too broad for a four page paper.You could write about evil all year, every year, until the super volcano
erupts.Better that you finesse your
interest in evil into a more pared down, controllable concept and application.

Try this revision on for size:The
speaker in “Saturn” invokes mythology and astrology to paint a pornographic
fantasy about an otherwise mundane life with an alcoholic father.

Guidelines in Writing about
Poetry

Prewriting

1.Follow our class rules to reading poetry.

2.Determine what is literally happening in your chosen poem(s).You should have

already looked up information about the poet(s) as well as unfamiliar
words and

allusions.

3.Fix
on a theme you wish to pursue, and using supporting “evidence” from the poem,

give an interpretation.

4.Try
to understand how the images, metaphors, conceits, etc construct or inform main

and secondary themes.

5.Get
started.Compile on paper all of your ideas; link passages, and consider just how

you will tie your ideas and textual passages together.Look back through your notes,

especially your textual annotations.Class talk can only touch the tip of the proverbial

iceberg: dig deeper.Your prewriting work is due alongside your
rough and final

drafts.

Composing

1.Remember, you do not have to begin by writing your introduction
first.You can